San Mateo pays family of boy pepper-sprayed by cop

San Mateo settles after cop used it on 7-year-old boy

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, December 8, 2011

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A canister of pepper spray.

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San Mateo pays family of boy pepper-sprayed by cop

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When an agitated 7-year-old special education student clambered onto a bookshelf at his San Mateo school, aides called the police. Officer George "Randy" Heald told the boy it wasn't safe on the unsteady furniture and that he had to get down.

The boy refused, and the officer blasted him with pepper spray, touching off a debate over whether the chemical agent should ever be used on children.

San Mateo agreed last week to pay $55,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed by the boy's family, claiming he had been treated like a "common criminal." Earlier, the San Mateo County Board of Education, the county's Behavioral Health and Recovery Services agency and the Belmont-Redwood Shores School District paid an undisclosed sum to settle claims against them in the same lawsuit.

"Unfortunately, police think that pepper spray is not really a weapon, that it doesn't do any permanent harm," said the boy's attorney, Michael Sorgen. "It turns out it's not necessarily true."

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But San Mateo police say they have no restrictions on the use of pepper spray against children, and a top department official defended its use on a boy who was "out of control."

"The end result was that the child was taken under control," said Deputy Chief Mike Callagy.

Bolted from school

The boy, identified in the lawsuit under the pseudonym Adam G., was enrolled in a special-education class at George Hall Elementary School in San Mateo. He has learning difficulties, dyslexia, anxiety disorder and social-skill problems.

On June 10, 2010, the boy refused to do a classroom assignment, left the campus and was forcibly returned to school by classroom aides. Agitated, he threw chairs in a classroom and climbed on top of a bookshelf and a cabinet, refusing to come down, said the suit the family filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

A therapist and teacher decided to call the police. Heald, a veteran officer just months from retirement, told the boy that "if he did not come down by the count of five, he would be pepper-sprayed," the complaint said.

Adam did not know what pepper spray was, the suit said. Heald explained to the boy that pepper spray "was like hot pepper and that it would make (him) cry and maybe throw up," attorneys for the officer and the city wrote in court papers.

Heald counted backward from five and then "blasted pepper spray in Adam's face," prompting the 51-pound boy to cry in pain, rub his face and come down from the cabinet, the suit said. The boy was then committed for a psychiatric evaluation.

The incident left Adam "more deeply anxious and fearful," the suit said. His parents transferred him to a Menlo Park learning center, where teachers "engage Adam in positive learning and do not resort to physical restraints or calling the police to address his emotional behaviors," the suit said.

In court papers, attorneys for Heald and the city said the boy had responded to the officer's warnings with "growling noises" and "clawing-type" hand gestures.

Safest strategy

After Heald counted down to one, the boy suddenly scooted from a bookshelf to a less stable cabinet that supported a television set, they wrote. There was a piano below the cabinet, and Heald concluded the boy "needed to be immediately removed" for his own safety, the attorneys said.

The officer believed the pepper spray was the "safest and least intrusive way" to gain control of the boy, they wrote.

Callagy, the deputy police chief, said Heald "used the tools that he had to the best of his ability. It is unfortunate that the child was out of control in that situation. But we support the officer's actions and what he did under those circumstances."

Heald, 50, retired in March after 27 years on the force and could not be reached for comment.

Kamran Loghman, a chemical-exposure expert who helped develop policies on the use of pepper spray for the FBI and the state Department of Justice, blasted the decision to spray the chemical on the boy.

"I think it's an absolute absence of wisdom and intelligence," Loghman said. "You don't use a weapon on a child unless he had something that is extremely dangerous in his hand, that may cause death to himself or others, like a gun."

Act like adults

He added, "Many of us have children who almost on a daily basis don't listen to their parents. What do we do? Throw vinegar on them? Pepper-spray them? As adults, we have to remain adult-centered, try to be calm and take situations under control."

"There's so many ways to deal with people, and unless you're being a threat, I don't understand why pepper spray or any other type of that kind of uncomfortable force would be used on a child," Alpert said.

But Alpert said there are instances in which exceptions can be made when it comes to police tactics and children.

In Miami, police used a Taser shock weapon on a 6-year-old boy in 2004. "Everyone went ballistic, but what happened was that he had a shard of glass and was about to cut his wrist," Alpert said. Under the circumstances, he said, using the shock weapon was a reasonable decision.

The lawsuit settlement with Adam G.'s family calls for police, school and county officials to draft policies that dictate "what are the appropriate situations for the police to be called in for assistance based on student misconduct," said Sorgen, the boy's lawyer.